by Tim LaHaye
David nodded and reached for his phone, but it was ringing. He zeroed in on the caller ID. “It’s him!”
Mac leaned over to listen in, and David hit the button. “Captain Steele, where are you, man? I’ve been trying to call you for—”
“Excuse me, sir. This is Mrs. Dwayne Tuttle. You can call me Trudy. My husband and Captain Steele left me to arrange for hotel rooms and take care of the luggage. I saw this phone in the captain’s bag, and I’m sorry but I turned it on out of curiosity. Well, just dozens and dozens of messages have been scrollin’ by, all with your number and this abort message, and I thought I ought to call.”
“Ma’am, thank you. Where is Rayf—Captain Steele right now?”
“He and my husband are on their way to try to find Miss Durham.”
“Does your husband have a phone?”
“Sure, but last time I talked to him his battery died.”
“Is there any way we can reach them?”
“I have the address where they’re going, if you’d like to call the young lady.”
Mac grabbed the phone. “Ma’am, this is Mac McCullum. Remember meeting me in Africa?”
“Yes, sir, how are you feel—”
“Trudy, listen to me and do exactly what I say. It’s a matter of life and death. Do you know that town?”
“Just from the airport to here.”
“Get yourself a map at the desk and have them tell you the fastest way to Hattie’s address. Drive there as fast as you can. If anyone tries to stop you, don’t let them and explain later. At all costs, you must tell Captain Steele to abort. He’ll take it from there.”
“Abort, yessir.”
“Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“Then do it right now, Trudy. And call us to let us know what happens.”
Dwayne drove past the address on Rue Marguerite and stopped a block and a half away.
“Seedy little dump, idn’t it?” Dwayne said.
“It’s perfect, really,” Rayford said. “I’m impressed. This may be the best choice they made in the whole fiasco. Let’s watch awhile and see if she comes or goes.”
Rayford got antsy after ten minutes when only two people left the building, neither Hattie. “If I’m not back in five minutes, come looking for me.”
“They armed?”
“Doubt it. If Sam’s as bright as his brother, he wouldn’t know which end to aim. Hattie would worry about breaking a nail.”
Still, Rayford wished he was carrying the weapon Albie had described. He could never shoot Hattie, and he wouldn’t risk the consequences for a small-time goon like Bo Hanson’s brother. This shouldn’t be that risky, he decided. Hattie would let him in. If she didn’t, he had a story in mind to use on Sam Hanson.
The three-story building had three sets of ten mailboxes built into the wall in the lobby, which was neither manned nor secured. Rayford was surprised they had not chosen a building with at least a buzz-in system. He found “Dykes, J.” on the box numbered 323 and mounted the stairs.
Each floor was reached by a series of four sets of steps in a square pattern. By the time Rayford reached the top floor, he was winded and his knee ached. Apartment 323 was on the front side of the building at the left end. He could have been watched from the time he stepped onto the property. Sam and Hattie could have even seen the car cruise by.
Rayford gathered himself and found the button in a metal box in the middle of the apartment door. His push resulted in a resounding two-tone ring that could have been heard in any flat on that floor. Rayford thought he heard movement, but no one answered. As he reached for the button again, he distinctly heard someone. He guessed they were pulling on a pair of pants. “Take your time,” he called out. “No rush.”
He imagined someone tiptoeing to the door and listening. There was no peephole. Rayford hoped whoever it was was listening to tell if he had retreated. He pushed the button quickly, giving them an earful.
A male voice: “Who is it?”
“Tom Agee.”
“Who?”
“Thomas Agee.”
“Don’t know that name.”
“I’m a friend of the woman who lives here.”
“No woman here. Just me.”
“Mae Willie doesn’t live here?”
Silence.
“May I speak with Mae, please? Tell her it’s a friend.”
Rayford heard the unmistakable sliding action on a semiautomatic pistol. He considered a break for the stairs, but the door opened abruptly to reveal a muscular young man with one hand behind his back. He was barefoot and bare chested, wearing only jeans.
Rayford decided on a bold approach. “May I come in?”
“Who’d you say you were looking for?”
“You heard me or you wouldn’t have opened the door. Now where is she?”
“I told you, it’s just me here. What do you want with her?”
“Who? The one who doesn’t live here?”
“State your business or hit the street.”
“Are you Samuel Hanson?”
The man leveled his eyes. “Name’s Jimmy Dykes.”
“Then you are Samuel Hanson. Where’s Hattie Durham?”
The man started to shut the door. “Buddy, you’re lost. There’s nobody here by that—”
Rayford stepped forward and the door stopped at his foot. “If I’m in the wrong place, how did I know yours and Hattie’s real names? Now I need to speak with her.”
“Dykes” seemed to be considering it.
“You’re not GC, are you?”
“I’m a friend of Hattie’s,” Rayford said, loudly enough so Hattie might hear him.
“You’re not really Tommy Agee, either, are you?”
“We all have to be careful, Samuel. I’m Rayford Steele. I bring you greetings from your brother, Bo.”
Samuel had still not moved. “Hi, back. Hattie’s not here, but I can take you to her. C’mon in while I get dressed.”
Samuel pushed the door open wider and Rayford stepped in. As the door was swinging shut, Rayford heard footsteps flying up the stairs. Samuel headed for another room, and as he turned his back, Rayford saw him move a handgun from back to front.
Samuel set the weapon on the table, still blocking Rayford’s view of it with his body. He grabbed a shirt and had one arm in it when frenzied banging on the door and ringing of the bell made both men start.
Rayford hoped it was Hattie. He ignored Samuel’s look and swung the door open. Trudy?! His life shifted into slow motion as he desperately tried to remember her undercover name. He turned to look back at Samuel, who tore his shirt straightening his arm to reach for the gun.
Trudy screeched, “Abort!” and reached as if to pull Rayford from the room, but he knew neither of them could run from that weapon. The incongruity alone of Trudy showing up with an abort message told him that whoever this man was, he would kill them.
Trudy bounded down the stairs, and Rayford imagined taking a .45 bullet in the back and another in the top of the head. Trudy would be slain before she reached the first floor. Rayford simply could not let this man follow him out of the room unimpeded.
He turned from the slowly closing door and charged the man, who had just fought through his shredded shirt and had grabbed the handle of the weapon. One stride from him and accelerating, Rayford saw him lift the already cocked firearm and slip his index finger onto the trigger.
Rayford didn’t want to take his chances wrestling a man with a gun. He could cover the man’s hand with both of his, but he didn’t like the odds. Instead he marshaled his adrenaline and left his feet, throwing himself at the gunman with his fists drawn into his chest, elbows akimbo, like a cornerback taking out a receiver who just got his fingers on the ball.
Rayford’s man didn’t fumble, but he did go flying. Rayford had caught him in the neck with one of his forearms, driving his body back as his head jerked forward. As his momentum carried him back, the man’s bare feet hit the floor
and a small table caught him behind his knees.
His feet flew straight up as the back of his head smashed through the front window. He lay there stunned, the gun in his hand, finger on the trigger, as Rayford scrambled toward the door. His feet were moving so fast he could hardly gain purchase on the floor. He felt as if he were in a nightmare, being chased by a monster, and running in muck.
He yanked the door open and peeked back as he fled. The gunman’s head still stuck in the broken window. His torso had wound up lower than his feet, and his kicking and squirming only made it harder for him to get up.
It did not stop him from firing off two rounds, however, deafening, ugly explosions almost simultaneous with shattering wood and flying wallboard.
Rayford crashed down the steps three and four at a time, nearly overtaking Trudy, who was moving as fast as she could one step at a time. When Rayford reached the second floor, he grabbed the banister and, despite his protesting knee, swung into the middle of the staircase. He dropped to the floor as Trudy reached the last step.
She moaned as she ran as if certain she was about to be shot. Rayford felt a tingling in his back as if he, too, expected a bullet to rip through him.
Trudy had left her car idling, the door open, directly in front of the apartment building. Dwayne had noticed it and pulled up behind it, clearly puzzled. He looked up as Rayford and his wife hurried toward him, and he called out, “What the . . . ?”
“Go!” Rayford waved at him. “We’ll catch up with you!”
Rayford ran to the driver’s side and Trudy opened the passenger door as shots came from the third floor. As soon as Rayford heard her door shut, he floored the accelerator and threw dirt and stones as the car fishtailed down the street.
His instincts had saved them, he knew, but as his heart shoved blood through him faster than ever, Rayford was unable to feel gratitude for that presence of mind. He knew God had been with him, protected him, helped spare him. But all Rayford felt was a resurgence of the rage that had plagued him for months.
This, all of it, started and ended with Nicolae Carpathia. He wanted to murder the man and he would, he decided, if it was the last thing he did on earth. And he didn’t care if it was. He would spend whatever he had to for that weapon from Albie, and regardless what it took, he would be where he needed to be when the time came.
Trudy, gasping, wrestled her seat belt on. As Rayford followed Dwayne through the narrow streets, she fished around on the floor and came up with his phone. “Is—is—is there a sp—sp—speed dial number for Mac McCu—”
“Two.”
She punched it and Rayford heard it ring, then Mac’s voice. “Mrs. Tuttle?”
“M—m—mission accomplished!” Trudy said, and she handed Rayford the phone as she burst into tears.
CHAPTER 17
David was spent.
He and Mac had listened to Rayford’s debriefing as the two cars zipped through Le Havre on their way back to the hotel. All agreed that if they had not been followed they were safe briefly at the hotel under their aliases, but that they should leave the country as soon as possible. Rayford had used both his phony and his real name with “Samuel,” who, of course, turned out to be a GC plant. Provided he hadn’t bled to death from window injuries, he would have already spread the word that Rayford was in France.
That made it unlikely that Rayford could get out of the airport through customs. Fortunately, he had separated from the “Hills” as they passed through customs and was not linked to their party on the computer.
“We can’t help you from here,” David told him.
“I’ll stay in touch,” Rayford said. “But I’m not going straight home.”
Buck left Israel without visiting the Wailing Wall. Neither had he reported to Tsion the details of his encounter with Chaim Rosenzweig. He wanted to do that in person, knowing Tsion would be as heavyhearted as he was. How they had grown to love Chaim! It wasn’t enough to say that you couldn’t make a person’s decision for him. The believers who loved Chaim wanted to do just that.
Buck enjoyed a warm reunion with Lukas Miklos and his wife. In her broken English, Mrs. Miklos told Buck with relish, “Laslos loves the intrigue. He tells me day and night for week, remember our friend be Greg North, not you-know-who.”
Laslos had done his homework. He had made his lignite business so profitable that he was stockpiling profits and planned to sell the operation to the Global Community just before trading restrictions were predicted to go into effect.
Laslos showed Buck an expansive site at a new location where he would house trucks and loading equipment to ship commodities to co-op locations. His new concern would look like a GC-sanctioned shipping business, but it would be ten times larger than it appeared and would be the hub of co-op activity in that part of the world.
Buck also visited Laslos’ underground church, a vast group of believers led by a converted Jew whose main dilemma was how large the body had grown. Buck flew back to the States encouraged by what he had seen in Greece but saddened by the lack of spiritual movement on Chaim Rosenzweig’s part.
At home he found Tsion and Chloe skittish about a decision they had come to about Leah. Buck thought it a great idea, but they wondered whether they should have proceeded without consulting Rayford. Due to the near disaster with Rayford and the complexity of the communications between Force members from all over the world, Tsion suggested putting one person in charge of centralized information. Leah immediately volunteered, saying she found herself looking for things to do between preparing meals. Chloe had spent hours with her, bringing her up to speed on the computer, and Leah said she had never felt more fulfilled.
The four gathered around the computer, and Leah showed how she had found a program that helped her consolidate everything coming into or going out from the safe house. With a little thought and a few keystrokes, she then transmitted to everyone what the others had communicated. “This way we’ll never wonder who’s in the loop, who knows what, and who doesn’t. If Mac or David writes up an incident that everyone should know about, I see that everyone gets it.”
As they hurtled toward the midpoint of the Tribulation, Buck sensed they were as prepared as they could be.
Rayford had to give Dwayne his due. He may have been a loudmouth, but he had come up with the best plan for spiriting Rayford out of Le Havre. “We didn’t get to use my ideas for ditchin’ Hattie’s boyfriend,” he said, “so this is only fair.”
It was clear Trudy was proud of what she had accomplished that morning, but she was also still shaken and wanted no responsibility for another caper on their way out of the country.
She and her husband preceded Rayford to the airport by fifteen minutes to drop off their rental and get the plane ready for takeoff. Rayford would follow and drop off his car, then casually move to the back side of the lot where a fence separated the cars from the terminal. Dwayne had noticed that the area behind the fence led around the end of the terminal building and directly out to the runway. “You can either hop that fence and run to the plane—once you’ve heard it screamin’ and know we’re ready to go—or I can bring the plane close to that fence and make it easier for you.”
“Pros and cons?” Rayford said.
“It could be a long run to the plane, and you’ve been gimpy on that knee. On the other hand, if I bring the Super J to the fence, that’ll draw a lot of eyes and maybe even some freaked-out officials trying to keep me out of that area.”
They finally decided that Dwayne would get the plane into takeoff position and then ask permission to taxi out of the sun near the terminal to check out something underneath. That would put him closer to where Rayford could vault the fence. “I’ll tell ’em I heard a squeak in a wheel bearing and see if I can’t get ’em to poke around under there with me while you’re slipping aboard.”
All went well until Rayford pulled into the rental lot. The Super J was on the runway, engines whining. The rental attendant asked him something in French, then
translated into English. “Are you keeping it on the charge card?”
Rayford nodded as the young man printed the receipt and kept looking from the handheld machine to Rayford’s eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, turning his back to Rayford and talking into his walkie-talkie. Rayford didn’t understand much of the French, but he was certain the man was asking a coworker something about “Agee, Thomas.”
The receipt was printing as the man spoke, but when he tore it off he didn’t hand it to Rayford. “No did go through,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Rayford said. “It’s right there.”
“Please to wait and I try again.”
“I’m late,” Rayford said, backing away and aware of movement near the terminal. “Send me a bill.”
“No, must you wait. Need new card.”
“Bill me,” Rayford said, looking over his shoulder to see the Super J slowly taxiing his direction. Three men ran from the terminal toward the rental lot. Rayford sprinted toward the fence, and the agent yelled for help.
Rayford guessed the fence was four and a half feet high and the Super J more than a hundred yards away, moving slowly. If Dwayne had succeeded, an inspector would likely walk out to meet the plane. The men racing into the lot were a hundred feet behind Rayford. They all looked young and athletic.
Rayford tried to scissor-kick his way over the fence but caught his lead heel on the top. That caused him to slow enough that gravity brought his seat down on the middle of the fence, and his momentum took him over. He grabbed the top to keep from slamming to the ground, but until he extricated his heel he hung upside down for a few seconds. He wiggled free and landed hard on his shoulder, jumped up, and lit out for the plane.
A look back revealed his pursuers clearing the fence with ease. If Dwayne didn’t increase his speed, Rayford would never outrun them. Rayford heard the acceleration of rpm’s and saw a man with a clipboard waving at Dwayne to slow. Fortunately he didn’t comply, and Trudy lowered the steps as Rayford headed for the door.
